The Institutional, the Socioeconomic, and the Symbolic: Redefining Rural-Urban Inequalities in China

• In Event: Education for Whom and for What? Reconceptualizing Educational Inequality in Urbanizing China

Abstract

This paper proposes an alternative to the over-simplified conception of China's rural-urban inequality as a dualistic institutional hierarchy that structures individuals' economic, political and social positions. I argue that this dualistic conception – dominant in existing literatures – is an institutional legacy of the socialist planned economy, where individuals and families are tied to a particular locality and classified as either agricultural or non-agricultural in the household registration system. It is through this dualistic conception that scholars have conventionally divided Chinese children into four groups in the urbanizing context – regular rural children, rural left-behind children, rural-to-urban migrant children, and regular urban children (Han et al, 2014). As China rapidly urbanizes and reforms its institutions, however, it is high time to re-conceptualize rural-urban educational inequality.

Theoretically, my proposal draws on economic theories on urbanization (e.g. Lu, 2016) and sociological theories on institutional inequality and cultural processes (e.g. Lamont & Small, 2006). I also draw on empirical and historical research on Chinese education and society, as well as my own extensive field work in four middle schools in China for illustrative examples.

I argue that we should consider three different dimensions of rural-urban inequality: the socio-economic dimension, the institutional dimension, and the symbolic dimension. The socio-economic dimension is a spectrum of inequalities based primarily on the extent of population and industry agglomeration at a place. On one end of this spectrum are metropolitan cities with highly concentrated populations and secondary and tertiary industries; on the other end are sparsely populated villages with much fewer industries. Placement on this spectrum has direct implications for local social structure as well as educational resources and opportunities.

The institutional dimension is about the political institutions and social policies that creates, maintains or challenges rural-urban differences. The dualistic conception that dominates existing literatures on Chinese education is mostly a part of the institutional dimension. The dualistic institutions that give rural and urban residents differential political and social rights are gradually disintegrating; the state is now taking active measures to reduce rather than reinforce rural-urban inequality.

The symbolic dimension refers to the symbolic boundaries and hierarchies between rurality and urbanity. I trace the changing historic positioning of the rural in relation to the urban since the turn of the 20th century, from the foundation of society, to the source of revolutionary, to the symbol of backwardness and poverty, to the idyllic homeland. The discourse of suzhi, discussed in more detail in the other papers in this panel, played an important role in casting the rural as lacking modernity and devaluing the cultural capital of rural children and rural communities.

This three-dimensional model provides a framework through which to rethink decades of research on rural and migrant education in China. It reveals how the institutional dimension overshadowed the other two equally important dimensions and concealed their complex interactions in dominant academic as well as public discourses. In addition, it is also useful for understanding rural-urban inequality in other parts of the world.

Author

• Xin Xiang, Harvard University